Depression: My Own Personal Babadook

In 2014, Jennifer Kent’s directorial debut, The Babadook, made a significant impact on the horror genre. Garnering acclaim for its unique blend of a genuinely terrifying atmosphere and psychology, the film would go on to be one of the best-reviewed films of the year. The story of a widowed mother slowly losing her sanity to the monstrous title character and being haunted by visions of murdering her son is as much moving as it is horrific. The debate that has raged on about the film since its release has been around one question: Is The Babadook actually real? Within the context of the film’s narrative, there’s a deliberate ambiguity as to whether the family are truly being antagonised by a malevolent force, or if it’s all just a violent manifestation of the protagonist’s grief.

My answer to that question is a simple one, and that is of course The Babadook is real. I’m not talking about the monster itself, but the entire concept. The Babadook is more than a silver screen bad guy, he’s a very real entity that exists for the characters in the film and for all of us in real life. We are all haunted by Mr. Babadook, some of us a lot more than others. At the age of 16, I was diagnosed with clinical depression and admitted into a secure psychiatric unit, where I would live for two months. Five years later and it’s not gotten any easier. I’m ashamed of my depression, I don’t harp on about it on my Facebook and I don’t get into “Well, I’ve attempted suicide this many times” contests with people. Depression is something that I despise, and this is really the first time I’ve ever truly talked about it on a public forum.

Much like The Babadook, depression is an all-enveloping creature with no remorse or pity, it gets to you in the night, crawls along your ceiling and makes you fear for your life. The constant state of fear that I live in means I am almost always fatigued and possess little interest in actually connecting with other people. I don’t have any vices to use as a portal for briefly escaping this nightmare. I’ve never drank, smoked or done drugs, and I don’t believe that casual sex would be a healthy (or even obtainable) option for someone as emotionally unstable as myself. I have zero romantic fulfilment in my life, I can’t stand my job, and I manage to convince myself everyday that all of my friends actually hate me. It’s not a nice way to live, knowing that I am very much the victim in a horror movie in which I am the lead.

This mindset always leads back down the same path, and that is that suicide is the only option. Now, before you call the police and have them sent to my house, this is not a cry for help or a farewell message. I am not suicidal, because I have the awareness to recognise that the negativity in my brain stems from a genuine medical condition, to which killing myself is not a solution. The mother in The Babadook realises this in the film’s incredible finale, in which she tames the beast and traps it in the basement. This metaphor of allowing your feelings to live with you and keep them at bay is a universal truth. You can’t get rid of your demons, it isn’t possible, the effects of trauma will be with you forever. The fact that I know my life may not end via natural causes is not dramatic, it’s a factual statement. At this point, I’m almost certain that I will be the one to take my own life one day, which isn’t something I say lightly. It’s nothing more that a statistical probability, I do not need or want the pity of others.

The only joy I can squeeze out of life these days is through writing, and it’s something I’ve devoted the majority of my time to in the past year. After being unable to cope with the stress of university and dropping out of my undergraduate course, pursuing my dreams of composing words for a living was the only option. In truth, I have to either make it or break it, because I want to do the thing I love full-time, not lie in bed every morning trying to muster the strength to drag myself into my dead end job. Every shower, brushing of teeth and conversation I have throughout the day takes more effort than it should. In university, I went a whole six months without brushing my teeth because I resented everything around me. The walls of my student accommodation were closing in with me inside, The Babadook was there and chipping away at my ability to cope.

Trying to make sense of the world of content creation is an infinite source of stress, but one that is far more manageable than studying a course that did nothing to nurture my spirits, where I didn’t like a good 80% of the people I spent the day with. The seemingly never ending search to make a decent level of income off of the written word is a quest that I will always have hope of completing. And that’s the real crux of any horror movie, that there is always a sense of hope. The Babadook ends on a surprisingly heartwarming note in which the mother and her child have a happy life, with The Babadook living below, needing just enough attention to be acknowledged without being granted the power of full control. The idea that I can control my depression is one that I firmly believe most days, and when I don’t have that belief, I know that it will pass eventually. I should never pretend that my illness doesn’t exist, as that is where it draws its power from. To paraphrase Mr. Babadook himself, the more I deny him, the stronger he gets.